“Being rich does not automatically lead to a rich life. There is a difference between money and success. To be totally engaged with all my functions, all my faculties, all my capacities in life — to me that would be success. ” (Harvard Business Review)

What about the rat race in the first place? Is it worthwhile? Or are you just buying into someone else’s definition of success? Only you can decide that, and you’ll have to decide it over and over and over. But if you think it’s a rat race, before you drop out, take a deep breath. Maybe you picked the wrong job. Try again. And then try again. Try until you find something that stirs your passion, a job that matters to you and matters to others. It is the ultimate luxury to combine passion and contribution. It’s also a very clear path to happiness.

I am one of the few people on the planet who is not, and never intends to be, on Facebook. I have the old-fashioned notion that I like to see and talk to my friends – and they mean enough to me that it is worth taking the time and making the effort to make sure I do both.

I really enjoyed the film because the script is up to Sorkin’s usual high standards and took me back to the dialogue-heavy, fast-talking, walking-in-the-corridors scenes from The West Wing. Sorkin concentrates on the characters, rather than the technology, but credit also has to go director David Fincher, for managing to make scenes about computer programming visually interesting and full of suspense, and to Jesse Eisenberg for his nuanced portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg, who comes across as neither a hero or a villain. I hope all three, and the movie, make the Oscar nominations.

Despite the fact he is a billionaire, I felt sorry for the Zuckerberg portrayed in the movie as he is incapable of forming friendships. The movie highlights the irony that 500 million people use a social network whose creator lacks any social skills.

“When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility. In a way it’s a transcendent experience: we lose our bodies, our messy feelings, our desires, our fears.”